Longmont Kinetic Sculpture Race starts Saturday at noon

Second Kinetic Race in southern Colorado scheduled for Labor Day weekend

By Whitney BryenLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
07/17/2013 06:42:14 PM MDT

Updated:
07/18/2013 01:09:17 PM MDT

Ed Pomponi works to install small pumps in the hull of his kinetic sculpture called the Laarge Daark Aardvark on Wednesday in Lafayette. Since the sculpture has a flat bottom, any water that accumulates inside it can cause it to become unbalanced in the water. The 2013 Longmont Kinetic Sculpture Race is Saturday at Union Reservoir with gates opening at 9 a.m.
(
Matthew Jonas
)

Ed Pomponi tears off a piece of duct tape while working to install small pumps in the hull of his kinetic sculpture called the Laarge Daark Aardvark Wednesday in Lafayette.
(
Matthew Jonas
)

LONGMONT -- More than a dozen teams will race human-propelled works of art at Union Reservoir on Saturday during the 33rd annual Kinetic Sculpture Race.

Themed crafts will be manned by competitors dressed in costume that will race their electric-free machines on land and water.

Gates open at 9 a.m., and the race begins at noon.

Race organizer and competitor Jonathan Sterner's team will be racing a craft decorated like a tiger shark against competitor Paul Bailey's retro coffee shop-themed craft.

"We're going to have an acoustic guitar player and drums and poetry and coffee," Bailey said.

Bailey's team, the "Unseen Bean-etics," is made up of five competitors, including Gerry Leary, owner of the Unseen Bean coffee shops in Lafayette and Boulder; Clark Brace of Westminster; and Dave and Marc Rossel, Bailey's nephews from Germany.

Bailey started out in the pit crews about 27 years ago, shortly after the race came to Colorado, and became more dedicated to the events in 2008 when competitors began coordinating the races themselves and moved the event from Boulder to Longmont.

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Many of the event coordinators are also competitors who agreed to pitch in to keep the race alive, Sterner said.

This year, a second race is coming to southern Colorado on Labor Day weekend, Sterner said. The new race coordinators will be at Saturday's event, and some of the teams competing in Longmont also will compete in the new event, he said.

"I think it just shows the passion that this community has for kinetics," Sterner said. "We kept the races going even after we lost our sponsor in 2007, and now we'll have a second race in the state."

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